


Stories Not Meant for Sharing

by Accordionpea



Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 03:29:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5232254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accordionpea/pseuds/Accordionpea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which, after the lighthouse, and the lonely autumn, Snufkin returns to Moominvalley in the spring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stories Not Meant for Sharing

**Author's Note:**

> This heavily references and takes place after Moominvalley in November (the final novel in the series). Just a short drabble. How I imagine that first day together again would go.

Despite everything, Spring came.  Snufkin had songs about rain, and tinkering hail, and the noises of small unseen and unintroduced Creeps collected under his tongue. The ground beneath his boots shuffled like sand ‘til each step felt like two, and the task of it didn’t wear Snufkin down in the least. It felt like the earth was leaving prolonged good-byes to every step that sunk into it. The impressions of his boots could linger a minute, and then the light drizzle would expand the mud, and draw dirty puddles into each impression, until the wet mud knit together again as if nothing had stepped there.

The valley was close, but he didn’t look ahead. Snufkin watched only the ground changing, feeling like the sky had enough attention on his journies. The horizon was always beautiful, but it didn’t need his attention today. The ground was alive with the twinkling of drizzle. It exploded over puddles and sank softly into earth. Slowly he could see the light birch-roots peppered between the darker pines, until they were all to be seen. The light birches of Moominvalley took care of the forest from here.

Still, he did not look up. He had it in his mind to keep things small, so he kept himself tied to the earth like a bug or creep, only seeing things that didn’t reach too high. He was perfectly absent. So passive, he could hear every spruce needle bow under his boots and the wind moving through the thin trees with a boney sound.

 

***

At the bridge he played a song for the rain, and Moomintroll ran out to listen.

“Mama is making breakfast. Would you like pancakes and coffee? Oh, it’s so great to see you, Snuff,” he said, as he had in any Spring.

“Absolutely,” Snufkin said. “It’s good to see you too.”

***

Toft sat with the family, looking easygoing and quite integrated. He had his own chair, significantly smaller than the large velvet-cushioned that populated the house, it was more simple than ornate, and carved of wood.  As Snufkin approached the table they nodded respectfully to one another. Moominmama shuffled about, still doing some post-winter cleaning, while Moominpapa smoked his pipe and read letters, laughing and scoffing intermittently as he thumbed through them.

When all was done with breakfast, Moomintroll asked, “Would you share that song you played from the bridge? It sounded new!”

“Oh, music would be lovely!” Moominmama chirped, but with enough softness that all knew it was not a demand.

“Certainly,” Snufkin said, and he played his Song for the Rain. Everyone swayed gently, closed their eyes, and listened harder than they ever had before.

There was a comfortable silence after, where everyone sat with the tunes lingering in the air around them.

“Oh thank you, dear,” Moominmama said, and resumed her tidying.

“Snufkin, would you like to go someplace?” Moomintroll looked like so many things just then. So many emotions flitted in his dark eyes, Snufkin thought of how the rain danced so rickety on water yet so softly on the earth. He didn’t think hard about anything. He had decided he wouldn’t a long, long time ago.

“Let’s go to the lake,” Snufkin answered.

***

The drizzle had faded and the day’s hue shifted a few tones brighter as they walked. The lake was a ways away, but not too far.

The birds spoke above them, tittering in trees to one another. There was too much conversation all around to have one yourself, it felt. There were so many layers to the emerging spring’s own song.

Snufkin’s boots communicated gruffly with the dirt, while Moomintroll’s soft paws sank in and out like one patting down bed-sheets.

Snufkin smiled then and Moomintroll laughed. Such an utterance fit in perfectly with the bird’s sharp and repetitive words. It was a perfect noise for the soundscape, so much so Snufkin had to nod. Yes, a little sound was good.

 

***

The lake was bloated with rainwater. It spilled heavily over its edges and swallowed the bottoms of neighboring trees. The air was thick, misty, and wet, and the lichen on the trees glossed and shimmered in the sun’s light. Drops of water still dripped from branches of trees, and into the lake which couldn't still itself for them.

Snufkin did not ask where Moomintroll had been to, or why the family had disappeared. It was unimportant to this moment, together by the lake, the whole spring and summer waiting ahead of them. Moomintroll did not seem brimming with stories, which usually meant one doesn’t feel there are stories. Sometimes things just happen to people, and they aren’t good for telling or hearing. Snufkin knew a lot about those, and also that they needn’t be bad or terrible to earn that distinction. Perhaps just complicated, or hard to describe, or maybe dampened by the restrictions of language so much that trying to tell it tears it to pieces.

Whatever the case, they didn’t discuss the passed autumn. And he knew, in the way he simply did sometimes, they never would.

 

***

Moomintroll knew quickly how to react and respond to Snufkin, only a short while after meeting him the very first time. Where Snufkin didn’t say much, there was a lot to take in regardless, and absences were thick with intention as much as words. It was (and he only thought this quietly to himself) a little like reading a cat, which won’t leap at you in joy or whine when you threaten to leave. Its tail might swish, and its eyes would look this way or that, and you had to understand from that.

Always he had understood this, and though at times he had to feel confused, he nearly always knew how to be. In time it became relieving to be near someone who didn’t need to be told things, or reassured, or who had to fill in all the spaces of silence with busy-ness or words. It was nice to spend days together, or apart, or whatever one needed. He missed him sometimes, but he coped well knowing they could come together as though no time had passed.

Always, he understood everything at this cursory level, observing, but now, with the island behind him, he drew it inside himself for the very first time.

Some things didn’t make good stories, and telling them spoiled something inside. He couldn’t describe the Groke’s dance, or why he brought the lantern to her night after night, or how the Sea-Horse captivated him, or the feeling of the fear of sand and plants and rocks all around. None of it could be told. It had been lived, and that was it. It existed in that time, when it all made sense.  It would fall apart like old bark in his hands if he tried to hold it now. It would become a different thing.

The person in those stories existed in that time, and couldn’t tell them now.

Snufkin knew that feeling all along. Moomintroll only understood it now. Snufkin talked about it and Moomintroll tried to grasp it then but couldn’t.

Regardless of all of those things that happened, that can’t be told, they were there today and the air was fresh, the earth was washed, the lake looked inviting, and they could swim and lay and Snufkin could play his mouth-organ ‘til the sky dimmed.

They were where they should be right now, living.


End file.
